


Es ist ein Ros entsprungen

by Aeshna etonensis (GMWWemyss)



Series: Tales From Bent Clough [9]
Category: One Direction (Band), Village Tales
Genre: Bent Clough, COVID, Christmas, Gen, Lockdowns, M/M, Mentions of Village Tales friends, Quarantine, Staffordshire Moorlands, staffs, the Shipping Forecast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27916624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMWWemyss/pseuds/Aeshna%20etonensis
Summary: Even in a plague year, there is Christmas: and the obligation of Home charity
Relationships: Zayn Malik/Liam Payne
Series: Tales From Bent Clough [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1223303
Comments: 2





	Es ist ein Ros entsprungen

**Author's Note:**

> Christmas and homecomings in a Plague Year at Bent Clough; and a plea for charity at the end

* * *

The Foxes haue holes, and the birds of the ayre haue nests: but the sonne of man hath not where to lay his head.

– Matt. viii. 20, 1611 Authorised Version

* * *

A miserable Winter in a miserable year, this of 2020. _The general synopsis at midday...._

The times were out of joint – as were any number of noses.

_...Viking, North Utsire...._

His Grace was breathing fire and slaughter: indeed, like the as-yet unconverted Saul before ever he took the Damascus road, ‘breathing out threatenings and slaughter’ like Coleridge’s Pitt in the Vendée. And though their new management in their transitional phase was headed by an intemperate and peppery man, the duke had cause enough just now.

None of them – His Grace of Taunton, that Old Thatcherite very much included – had any use for the failed and ludicrous American president now mercifully departing the stage, or for his acolytes. But Charles duke of Taunton had little use for Americans, _tout court,_ bar their scholars and soldiers, and certainly did not consider Septic politics worthy of a Briton’s notice. That Haz, voguishly, had been daft enough to get into a spat over ‘masculinity’ with some Trumpshirt commentator should at most have annoyed His Grace, in normal times. That Haz had decided to pose in response with a banana in his mouth was an exasperation: this was no time for sly blowie jokes, or coy Not Quite Comings Out. But that Haz had failed to grasp – as Tommo, with all his commitment to Kicking Racism Out of Football, had known instinctively – that one simply _never_ mocked a _Black_ commentator with a _banana,_ however unthinkingly innocently, had left Haz dismasted and facing broadsides from Tommo and the duke alike.

_… Fastnet, Irish Sea...._

Nialler, in turn, was in a bit of a swivet as well, as his metabolism had at last begun to calm to match his maturer age, and this at the worst of pandemic-noshing times. Convinced that the … fine lines … of his jaw were blurring, that a double chin was imminent, that his bespoke trousers were in danger of wanting to be let out (and _just_ when he couldn’t well dash to 15 Savile Row), their commonly carefree friend was oscillating manically between comfort-food binges and panicked, penitent ringings-up of Liam at all hours begging workout and diet-and-nutrition advice.

_… inshore waters.... Cape Wrath to Rattray Head including Orkney.... Berwick upon Tweed to Whitby....Whitby to Gibraltar Point...._

Tommo the Terrible, in turn, in part by way of a counterirritant to Haz’ _crème de banane_ cock-up, had elected to interfere, ostensibly protectively and in Liam’s behalf, in the public – and publicity – claims that Zayn had got the Hadid chit up the duff. The _interference_ had not been public: Louis had that much sense, and that much a wholesome fear of the duke, who was already coldly angry over this UXB left by Cowell and his creatures: but it had been tiresome all the same.

_… St Davids Head to Great Orme Head, including St Georges Channel ...Great Orme Head to the Mull of Galloway … Isle of Man...._

An appalling Winter. An appalling year. A maimed Christmas season; no panto; interminable lockdowns.... It was, confided Liam, no wonder at all that everyone was irritable to the point of snapping.

At least, reflected he, Their Tommo hadn’t twigged to another fact which should have caused him to go explosively off.

_Forecast summary … to Thursday 24 December 2020 … unsettled weather...._

He and Zayn found it hilarious, if also a bit disturbing. Liam had, through contagious contact with their ducal patron over the years, caught a virulent, chronic, and incurable case of the genealogical and heraldic disease. It had amused and charmed them both, he and Zayn, and it had been an obscure comfort in its way as well, a sensed unexpected sheer _rightness,_ that the five of them had proven family by blood, cousins several times over, if distantly. Liam knew, had learnt, that all peoples everywhere are of one family, and each person his own and everyone else’s cousin many times over. On an earthier level, though, it amused him to realise that poor Cheryl, say, was his cousin (his twenty-eighth) and Zayn’s and all of theirs, Beauchamps and Draytons and de Veres and Chaworths and the duke’s own Clares in common and the Tweedys having descended to Geordie council estates and mines and docks from Ernulf de Hesdin and from various Baskervilles (Zayn had snorted, and muttered of hellhounds), from Tollemache and Fitzalan and the duke’s House of Stuart and earls of Angus, Dunbar, and Mar.

But Louis....

_… on Midlands Today. Shefali...._

Liam had learnt that families rose and fell, and that class was as temporary an identity and as false a construct as race: which for some of his chippier, flat-’atted, Labour identitarian mates was a difficulty. Their Tommo was able, by sheer bloodymindedness, to insist on his working class Tyke credentials with millions in the bank; not even Tommo could plausibly insist on these too stridently with peers and sovereigns in his family tree.

Which he, like everyone else, possessed, just as much as – as the duke liked to point out – even monarchs had shit-shovellin’ stable-boys and serfs in the pedigree, damn it all, what? His Grace was also an object lesson in the stark fact that royals were like rabbits, and kings got a deal of bastards.

Floris 5th, Count of Holland, was, like most 13th Century rulers, rather literally the father of his country, of the future Netherlands and of Belgian Flanders alike; he was married to a daughter of the Count of Flanders, grandson of a Countess of Brabant, and thrice-great-grandson of David 1st, King of Scots. His ties of blood extended to the Houses of Plantagenet and of Valois, and he became kin to peers, knights, and gentry in East Anglia and the East Midlands, from which Des’ Styles descended before ever that man removed to Redlynch and thence to Cheshire, as much as to Tommo-ancestral Belgians.

The fact was, to Liam’s hilarity and Zayn’s comic disgust, Gigi, on her Dutch mother’s side, was Floris of Holland’s direct descendant in five-and-twenty generations … and their, and Haz’, and Tommo’s, twenty-sixth cousin at most with a removal or three.

Liam was looking forward to taking the piss out of Zayn, and their both taking glee in not telling Louis until the moment best calculated to cause him to pitch a tanty. (If nothing else, it ought to divert Tommo from his tiresome insistence that, next Hallow E’en, ‘y’ want to dress up as [Dr Jackson Crawford](https://www.youtube.com/c/JacksonCrawford/videos), Payno, y’ already have t’ hat, it’ll be fookin’ Vikin’ funny, mate’....)

Liam was looking very much forward to thus annoying Louis … if, weather and pandemic permitting, Zayn ever got home to Bent Clough for Crimbo.

_… over the Staffordshire Moorlands. Tonight...._

A vile year. A mutilated cricket season; the wreck of livelihoods; the cruelty of deaths alone and unshriven; foolish policing and partisan jackbootery even as arsons raged unchecked just over in Derbs; churches closed; charity hampered....

Their Graces … and Her Grace’ mother, sunk in Alzheimer’s, isolated with a nurse within Wolfdown House – and a mercy that the duchess, that experienced archæologist in rough places, and the duke, that old soldier of rougher places yet, were more than capable of Doing For Themselves; Tommo’s family yet suspended in the long stages of grief and Tommo in label changes left perforce unresolved; the Servants’ Hall at Wolfdown, paid as usual but on board wages as to duties, divided into groups and immured in Wolfdown’s immensities; families caught between countries and continents, and sundered.

Farmers and shopkeepers going under even as people clamoured for food. Mellors and Manifolds, Fidlers, Gilmans, Tunnicliffs and Swindells and Wains, here in the Peak; Becketts and Blandfords and Pennys in the Woolfonts; Walletts, Beddows, and Lathes in Wolvo and Tetleys, Durkins, and Sugdens in Bradford – and Khans, too, and Shahs.

Music.... Well: it was less a comfort than Liam had hoped, less than he’d always known it. Sketches and watercolours of field mice and rats and voles were his relief: in fact, there was, in the back of his mind, a children’s book taking shape. It kept the mind off.

It kept the mind off deaths uncountable and loss and tragedy. Off those of the homeless and those sleeping rough whom he and Zayn could _not_ reach despite their efforts. Off those to whom tiers and quarantines were a sentence to abuse uninterrupted at home, or to despair.

He knew that, in the Woolfonts, Canon Paddick and Fr Campion and Fr Bohun and Fr Gascelyn Levett – and the imam Dr Jettou nearby, and Mgr Folan and Patricia Mullin for the Roman communion and the Dissenters – were staunch in going about their called duties, willing to fall ill and die, willing to be gaoled (though Wiltshire Police, with the duke on the bench and on the Police and Crime Panel both, weren’t such fools as to try _that_ on), so that they served who were called to the distressed and the dying: just as did Fr Baines and Fr Green in the Longnor Benefices. The Canon’s crippled brother-in-law, father of the Canon’s niece and ward, widower of the Canon’s late wife’s sister, had been released already from paraplegia by the severe mercy of death.

Sir Giles Trulock and his junior were encamped in the veterinary surgery in Woolfont Parva, like every Moorland vet. from Leek to Buxton. Lady Trulock, the duke’s former sister-in-law, was barricaded at the Dower House with her lady’s-maid and her daughter Hetty, the ducal niece, doing good remotely, directing aid where wanted. The duke’s nephew and heir Rupert was in his paradisal Westmorland Eden supporting the aged Hugo, Lord Mallerstang, to whom he was likewise heir; Rupe’s spare, Jamie, was doing much the same for the ducal dependants in the Welsh Marches.

A sundered and disjointed time, and Staffordshire Moorlands of all places astoundingly under the strictest tier of quarantine. It was well indeed that the quiet, off-the-books, no-names-no-pack-drill truth had been discreetly disseminated a year and more prior, so that – if ever Zayn got home – those who wanted to know _knew_ he belonged, and that they two made a family, even during a fortnight’s home quarantine coming from America.

_In the Peak District and the Welsh Hills, the forecast calls for...._

And here, at last, he was: his Zayn, his love, his all, cold-nipped and smelling of wind and weather, a trifle hollow-eyed from a long journey, but home, his true smile shining at last as he fell gratefully into Liam’s arms to – naturally – the strains of Slade. Home and dry, home to warmth and light and a roof overhead. A half-remembered verse, of foxes and birds, flitted unremarked through Liam’s mind as he held his beloved.

‘Ticker.... Yow warm yowerself in the kitchen: tea-keckle’s on. Ah’ll bring a blanket....’

‘Nah,’ smiled Zayn. ‘Just cuddles, like, yeah? _That’s_ home, and warmth.’

‘Ah can do that.’ Liam grinned. England-home-and-beauty, and for Christmas, too. _Bostin’_.

* * *

Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis, but mannus sone hath not where he schal reste his heed.

– Matt. viii. 20, Wycliffe’s Bible 

* * *

* * *

**The Christmas Appeal 2020:**

Atheist; Jedi; Pagan … or like me a member, not of any _organised_ religious denomination, but, rather, of the Church of England: no matter. This is the season of giving.

There are of course those charities which are always in our minds: The Samaritans, say. But if you are at all moved in this season to charitable alms, allow me to suggest some other worthy recipients, many with links to what you have just read. Childhood cancer is a terrible thing, and I have supported [Alexander’s Journey](https://alexanders-journey.com/) for some time. So is heart trouble terrible, and what befalls even [Democrats such as my business partner](https://www.gofundme.com/f/wt8un-keep-msp-afloat) under the US health system: **for whom I urgently beg a few pence.**

**In[Staffs](https://www.supportstaffordshire.org.uk/membership/organisation-directory), many want your aid:** [Home-Start Staffordshire Moorlands](http://homestartsm.org.uk/); the [Pat Woods Home for Strays in Leek](https://patwoodsleekhomeforstrays.com/); the [Beatrice Charity](https://beatricecharity.org/), which, when this cruel plague is over, shall again take special needs children and adults out upon the canals for a day; and the [Leek & District Foodbank](https://leekdistrict.foodbank.org.uk/).

The local **[Spurgeons](https://spurgeons.org/support-us/) is there** wherever children and families are in need. **[Farming and rural charities](https://www.farminguk.com/agricultural-directory/category/charities_247.html), too often overlooked, are essential, and specially so now: that notably includes [RABI](https://rabi.org.uk/donate/).**

**This pandemic mustn’t be allowed to cost us a generation of young musicians:** the [Cherubim Trust](https://www.cherubimtrust.org/) intend that it not do. There are _many_ important charities in the duke’s **[West Wilts](http://www.tisburyparishchurch.org/partners-and-charities-2/):** [Serve On](https://www.serveon.org.uk/fundraising-1), the **rescuers;** the **responders** of [RE:ACT](https://www.re-act.org.uk/#hero-cards); the [Burnbake Trust](https://www.burnbake-trust.co.uk/ways-to-help/); the [Gurkha Welfare Trust](https://www.gwt.org.uk/support-us/in-memory/); and many more.

**In Mallerstang and Eden,** and **everywhere there’s need, there is[Barnardo’s](https://donate.barnardos.org.uk/). Aid a child today.** And save persons in danger: support the [Kirkby Stephen Mountain Rescue Team](https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/charity-web/charity/finalCharityHomepage.action?uniqueVmgCharityUrl=kirkbystephenmrt) and the [North West Air Ambulance](https://nwaa.net/how-you-can-help).

[Honour the aged](https://www.ageuk.org.uk/carlisleandeden/get-involved/donate/).

Someday, things shall be normal again: _if_ we preserve them now. The [Settle & Carlisle](https://settlecarlisletrust.org.uk/donate-to-the-trust/) comes to mind. Meanwhile, **we must aid and shelter the suffering,** as [Manna House](https://www.manna-house.org.uk/donate-to-manna-house/) does.

If you wish to aid **in[Bradford & District](https://www.cabad.org.uk/), there is need and choice in profusion:** [Emmaus](https://emmaus.org.uk/bradford/support-us/donate/) transforming the lives of the formerly homeless; the [Bradford Soup Run](http://www.thebradfordsouprun.org.uk/index.php/donations/) feeding them; [Bradford Night Stop](https://www.bradfordnightstop.org.uk/donate/) aiding homeless and vulnerable youth....

**In Wolvo,** I implore that you consider [St George’s House](http://www.st-georges-house.org.uk/); [Include Me Too](https://includemetoo.org.uk/) for the disabled young; [The Way Youth Zone](https://www.thewayyouthzone.org/); and, **in the West Midlands and everywhere,[Age UK](https://www.ageuk.org.uk/wolverhampton/get-involved/donate/). Our OAPs are starved too often of human contact and of support in the best of times; lockdown is literally killing them by inches.**

And **in Oswestry and Melverley and the Marches, with agriculture disjointed, heavy weather threatening, and floods ever likely, I beg that you aid the[foodbank](https://oswestryandborders.foodbank.org.uk/),** and the [Trussell Trust](https://www.trusselltrust.org/make-a-donation/) nationally.

_When you have done your duty_ – even a fiver helps immensely – you shall, I hope, have a happy Christmas.


End file.
